Watching Point 255

255 — WATCH lest God’s rewards get ahead of God in your estimation, so that you seek to marry God for His money. When Job made this mistake, he had to go through a period in which he lost all satisfaction in effect, until he learned the lesson, namely, to put cause first.

The Bible indicates that Job lost all that he had; but a metaphysician would interpret this to mean that it was necessary for him to lose all satisfaction in effect, in order that he might be driven back to cause. Then he learned the lesson, viz., that the only reality is in the flow from divine cause to effect. We should never believe that effect can flow back to cause with the power either to make man happy or miserable, to give him life or to take it away.

Hell may be defined as giving power to the symbol, — as thought stopping with effect, since through this error man separates himself from God. Heaven would then be thought of as seeing through the symbol, to the divine source to which the symbol points. God demands that we never permit His blessings to get ahead of Him in our affections.